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New special school in Doddington near Sittingbourne opens doors
06:00, 01 October 2020
A special school is opening its doors this morning at the site an old village primary school which closed 14 years ago.
The new Infiniti School in The Street, Doddington, near Sittingbourne , will look after children referred to them by Kent County Council.
It will take the place of Doddington Primary School which was closed in 2006 after a drop in the number of pupils and will start with six members of staff until more are needed to meet the demand of pupils.
Today and tomorrow will be used as teacher training days, with children expected to walk through the doors early next week.
Head teacher Nick Rogers, who has worked with children with special educational needs for 15 years, said: "We want the children when they come into the school to be really involved in the development of it.
"We're going to discuss with them how they want to develop the uniform in conjunction with the staff so there is a feeling of ownership from the students."
"I can;' wait until we get students through the door and they get to experience the way we work with them as well as the site together, such as the natural light we get throughout the site is brilliant and the site as a whole is perfect in creating a calm environment for them to work in."
'The reason why we got this site was to take advantage of the outside space.'
Mr Rogers admitted they are looking to specialise in sports and outdoor education because of the size of the site.
He said: "The reason why we got this site was to take advantage of the outside space.
"We're going to specialise in outside education and sport, which we can use the field for and playgrounds, but were also going to look at implementing a forest school and the benefits of that will have knock on affects in the classroom."
The school opening is the latest in a number of of new special schools for Swale , including the £11.5million Aspire School in Vellum Drive, near Sittingbourne, which opened in July.
Another is planned to open on the former Danley Middle School site in Halfway Road in September 2022 and cater for 120 young people.
